Enhancing Operational Efficiency: A Case Study on the United States Naval Academy Midshipmen Summer Travel Program

The United States Naval Academy (USNA) is a prestigious military academy that trains officers for the United States Navy and Marine Corps. Since 2014, Immersion Consulting has been supporting the USNA's efforts to improve the operational efficiency of the Midshipmen Summer Travel Program. The program involves planning and executing summer travel for Navy midshipmen worldwide. The focus is on achieving compliant, repeatable, and sustainable processes for this complex task. The USNA's challenge was to manage the travel arrangements for over 3,000 midshipmen, a task fraught with potential for human error, delays, and cost overruns.

The United States Naval Academy (USNA) faced a significant challenge in organizing travel for over 3,000 midshipmen to global locations. The process, which involved acquiring and documenting travel arrangements and managing multiple itinerary and entitlement changes, was complex, dynamic, and high-risk for human error. The manual business processes and systems in place were inefficient, leading to delays, processing errors, cost overruns, and financial hardship for the travelers. The financial and logistical systems often failed to generate crucial travel information promptly. The USNA needed a solution that could handle structured data and information produced by multiple, disparate systems, as well as unstructured data present in forms, documents, and artifacts.

The USNA implemented Altair® Monarch®, a self-service data transformation solution that leverages existing data and information in the business environment without requiring system enhancements. Monarch improves the accuracy and fidelity of finance and accounting data used for decision support and automates complex, high-risk, and costly manual business processes. Working closely with client end users, specific travel business rules were incorporated into Monarch's inherent software logic. The tool's business rules enable specialized reporting for decision support, facilitating timely and accurate changes to trips, entitlements, and costs, as well as updates to traveler information. Monarch's ability to process complex logic statements significantly reduces machine processing time. The solution also allows the receipt of multiple data sources over live database connections, enabling the addition of authoritative data sources to correct deficiencies in system reporting.

• The implementation of Altair® Monarch® has dramatically improved the operational efficiency of the USNA's Midshipmen Summer Travel Program. The solution provides complete, actionable, and prioritized reports, relieving the burden from training coordinators and financial managers who can now focus more on other tasks. The automation and enhancement of data processing steps have resulted in a compliant, repeatable, and scalable solution. The USNA has not only improved the effectiveness of the travel program but also enhanced the travel experiences of the midshipmen. The operational readiness of the USNA has improved beyond previous business practices that used disparate, static reports.

• Significant reduction in total hours required to administer the Midshipmen Summer Training Program.
• Reduced future costs associated with system enhancement.
• Significant decrease in processing errors and cost overruns.